David Bowie- songwriting techniques?

Another thing I've noticed is Bowie likes to use unusual steps in his chord progressions for dramatic effect. For example he'll go from A major down to E flat major. Or F major up to A major.
And it works because he knows how to to resolve them and when to return to the root.
This is just one of his many tricks.

 

I think Bowie is a combination of having a solid grounding in what you're supposed to do, and getting it wrong at the same time.

A lot of his earlier writing strikes me as Beatle-based but here's three 'early style' hallmarks.

1. OUT OF KEY CHORDS AND IGNORING PULL

He grasped their use of Out-Of-Key chords, (chords you traditionally wouldn't find used within that home key), but he ignores the natural pull of chords - where they would normally resolve in traditional composing.

So you have 'Space Oddity' in the Key of C, and then he throws in a E7 chord out of nowhere. This E7 pulls towards A Major, but he instead follows it with an F Major.

(C) This is ground control to Major (E7) Tom. You've really made the (F) grade.

'The Man Who Sold The World' is in F. So what's that Bbm doing in the chorus, flattening the D?

Oh (C) no, not (F) me, I (Bbm) never lost control. (F)

'Boys Keep Swinging' is in D major, yet throws in two bizarre out of key chords, the E and Bb chords.

(D) Heaven loves ya. (E) The clouds are for ya (Bb) Nothing stands in your way when you're a (D) boy.

2. CHORD MOVEMENT FROM MAJOR TO MINOR

This turns up frequently in mid-period beatles songs, where you sound a major version of the chord, the immediately follow it with the minor version eg. In (major) My (minor) Life... If Bowie doesn't do it immediately, he might sound a minor version of the chord later in the verse, such as using both C and Cm in the verses of 'Quicksand'.

It's rare to hear this transition in current music. With Bowie, you get transitions like this:

Space Oddity: You've really made the (F Major) Grade, and the (F Minor) Papers want to (C) know...

Life On Mars: look at those cavemen (F Major) go. (F Minor) It's the freakiest (Cm7) show.

Cygnet Committee: (G Major) Sadly as (G Minor) I tie my shoes.

You'll see it turn up frequently in the writing of what I think of as Bowie's children: 80's English pop stars. Take for example, the Pet Shop Boys song 'My October Symphony.'

My oct- (F Maj7) tober symphony. or (Fm7) as an indication...

Incidentally, that song also uses the third early Bowie hallmark.

3. DESCENDING BASS

It was a favourite of mid-period Beatles McCartney and Cole Porter. The bass descends stepwise under the chord progression in a smooth line, so if you sound a F chord followed by a C you'd play a F, then an E on the bass, and keep going down.

The classic stepwise descent is 'Chim-Chimney' song from Mary Poppins - the bass steps down with each chord. If you turn that progression from Major to minor, you have both 'Life On Mars?' and 'My Way'.

(F / F bass) It's a (F / E bass) god awful small af- (Cm / Eb bass) fair to the (D / D bass) girl with the mousy hair.

It's basically the sound of 'Hunky Dory'. You'll hear the same bass descent happening under the chorus of 'Changes' and 'Oh! You Pretty Things', giving away the fact they were most likely composed on piano.

Let's look at 'My October Symphony' again.

Or (Fm7 / F Bass) as an indi- (Ebmaj7 / Eb bass) cation (Dm-5 / D bass) change the dedi- (Cm / C Bass) cation from (Bb11 / Bb bass) revolution...

Combine those hallmarks and it's easy to write fake early Bowie songs this way. I just removed one from an album tracklist because I figured, as fun as it was to write, it was more him than me. The main problem with this kind of thing is, he inspired most of the 80's, so any fakery has been well-mined. Check out the chorus of 'Sowing The Seeds Of Love' sometime. It's not 'Beatlesque': it's just the chorus of 'Changes' with an Out-Of-Key turnaround, which makes it even more Bowie.

If anyone wants to comment on the later period, go for it.

 

Very interesting, thanks. My October Symphony is an incredible composition.

It's funny how hardly anyone detected much of a Bowie influence at the time PSB were at their commercial peak, but certain interesting influences seem to have been revealed ever since they worked together.

 

I remember this from the Ziggy movie.

 

The best musical artists get inspiration from everything including things in every day life. Magazines, books, films, vague ideas, dreams, paintings, other works, people you talk to conversations, religion, philosophy, history, current world events, sports scores etc. They take all this data process it, digest it, and then present it to us in an new and artistic way that challenges us. Often times they don't even know what they are doing or don't see the big picture until the work is complete, it just sort of flows out of them naturally. It's a gift not many have but Bowie has it in spades he is one of the best.

 

Tony Visconti claims that he did this for nearly every album he recorded with Bowie. He'd come in with maybe one idea or 2 but never finished songs. Then they would record things and he would build songs around that. It's probably true that most songwriters start with the music and then come up with words. But Bowie would actually start with nothing and record it then add lyrics and melody later.

In his earliest days it wasn't like that. He would write complete songs in sort of a folky way and then record them. Around the time of Man Who Sold the World he tried to take a more band approach to his songwriting and let jams develop into things before he finished them off. Sometimes that meant that central riffs or progressions might have actually been the work of Mick Ronson (probably deserved a co-write credit or 2).

But with the relative failure of that album and the defection of Visconti to work full time with the more succcessful T. Rex, Bowie apparently had something to prove and concentrated on writing the best and most complete songs he could which made up the material for Hunky Dory and Ziggy. But after Diamond Dogs he sort of went back to the idea of building songs through jams again which he continued to do at least through Scary Monsters.

He always changes it up though. And he has had some really good collaborators too. But everything has that Bowie stamp for sure.

 

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I wonder if you get a chance, could you look at the chords to Word On A Wing? Some of them are quite baffling as well, during the "Just as long as I can walk...." part, and "Lord I offer my Word On A Wing and I'm trying hard to fit among your scheme of things" sections.

In fact W on a Wing is much like several other ballads in that it starts out fairly conventionally then the latter section morphs into a tangle of seemingly unrelated chords supporting a beautiful melody.

I wonder if Bowie starts out with some standard chords then subs more surpising ones?

 

I guess being a huge Bowie fan, over time I guess I've got clued into his lyrical wavelength and being able to deciphor his cryptic lyrics:

I recommend the excellent Blog site Pushing Ahead Of The Dame for future reference:
https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/

"I'm Afraid Of Americans" - as portrayed in the video Bowie as a European was concerned about the power and confidence that America has, and certain behaviour internally, which made him scared that they could use that power in a way that it would adversely affect the rest of the world.

"Little Wonder" - Again as its video hinted at; it's about himself as a youngster, and his imagination & willingness to explore different things resulting in "Sending me so far away" from what he was like to begin with.

"Fall Dog Bombs The Moon" - Fall Dog is George W. Bush. And 'the Devil' referred to throughout the song is terrorism, and Bush's habit of seeing it everywhere ('The Devil in the marketplace/the devil in your bleeding face') such as in illogical places ("The Moon"). The give away is the lines "I'm Goddamn rich/And exploding mad/When I talk in the night/There's oil on my hands/What a dog" = The President is the Fall Dog (sucker of a pet) being played by his masters. The corporations who made him. George W. Bush will be left with the blame, and his puppetmasters the booty (oil & wealth).

"New Killer Star" - The first verse describes 9/11. The chorus is George W. Bush's administration response to it with the "New Killer Star" representing the sexed up Weapons of Mass Destruction, and to then use it as an excuse "I've got a better way/I discovered a star .... A New Killer Star .... Ready Set Go" to go and invade Iraq.

 

The verse progression of 'Word' is as basic rock and roll as you can get: I IV V, in the key of B major.

The chorus shifts into Db for "Lord I kneel and offer you my word on a wing..." and resolves in D for "Lord, lord, my prayer flies like a word on a wing" but between that, he offers a series of sharpened notes in each chord that drift between keys:

And I'm (F) trying hard to (F7) fit among your (A) scheme of things (A7) <- I'll come back to this

It's (Dm) safer than a strange land but I (E) still care for myself

And I (C) don't stand in my own (Dm) light (D7).

That's where it turns back into D major.

Abandoning any clear key seems to add to a sense of confusion, aimlessness and loss, because it doesn't make traditional sense, but makes sense based on the lyric. My guess is he's allowing himself to wander for emotional effect. Reminds me of the pre-chorus section of 'Loving The Alien', but 'Wing' is far more successful.

There's a battle in the bridge between keys on:

(G) Ooh, (E7) ready to shape the scheme of things

Like the F to A transition in the chorus I mentioned earlier, Bowie does seem to like to sound chords in quick succession to confuse the issue of key: transitions between F and A, G and E, and C to A are common, (and vice versa), when usually these chords would exist in different keys.

This is how he gets harmonic tension and uncertainty in, say, 'The Man Who Sold The World", which sounds like it's in D Minor until the F chord in the intro confuses the issue, which is why there's such a moment of arrival when Bowie hits 'Stair' on the first line. It's a A major chord - we're definitely in D minor for the first two phrases, until he hits F again for 'Which came as some sup (C) rise' - now we're definitely in F. You can see why it's such a restless sounding song: it's unsure where 'home' is.

It's there in 'Ashes to ashes': (E) pictures of jap girls in synthesis, and I (G) ain't got no money...

It's the tension in the intro of 'Changes' between with the cycling between the plodded F major chord and the D major chord as the saxes rise.

It's the riff of 'Suffragette City': (A) Hey man, oh (F) leave me alone you (G) know

Even a commercial sounding song like 'Modern Love' - In C major, throws in an E7 chord on '(Am) but I never wave bye (E7) bye)' suggesting a shift to an A Minor key, immediately destroyed by the F Major chord of 'But I (C) try'.

 

He uses a lot of dominant chords that don't resolve at all to their I.

 

I'd never studied Bowie's songs in this way, but the major-third move is also something you find often to substantial effect in the Elton John catalog (along with using the third in the bass).

Not to take anything away from Bowie, of course. When I saw the thread title, first thing I thought of was that clip of Rick Wakeman going over the progression from "Life On Mars?". Just great work.

Ground control to Major Third ...